Lipstick Stalking

LIPSTICK!

Do y'all do this? I've found like 2 or 3 lipsticks that are great, perfect, wonderful, work-for-every-occasion colors for me, and now that I'm out of them, I can NOT find them again.

I hate going to WalMart or Kroger to look for lipsticks. I can't try them on, so I could buy 5 and it's possible that none of them look good. If I go to the cosmetics counter, I might get the right shade, but I've paid 4x as much and I've probably bought $80 worth of extra stuff. I'm a sucker for some cosmetic junk.

I just threw out 3 of my favorite lipsticks because I'd used them to within a millimeter of their lives. Two of them I bought the last time I was in LA (oh 5 years ago?) when I got to the hotel and realized I left my entire makeup bag at home. Smart. The other one is something I got in a freebie from Lancome. It's now discontinued, since that was probably 5 years ago too. Crap.

Guess I'm going to have to go make friends at the Bobbi Brown counter. I love her makeup. I don't wear foundation (too lazy) but their concealers and eye shadows rule. Maybe I should branch out a bit though. Any suggestions? Our mall is teeny, but we have Bobbi Brown, MAC, Lancome and Clinique counters. I could always drive to Atlanta too...mmmm Sephora.

NEWSFLASH!

Holy crap! My mom said she'd vote for Obama today. I think I left my jaw on the sidewalk when I was on the phone with her. The end times are surely near! My mom has always voted republican. Always. Even when it doesn't benefit her and even when she doesn't believe in it. Bizarre, I know. But the words out of her mouth were, "I will vote for Obama before I will vote for McCain...he's too scary." (Imagine my eyes popping out of their sockets here.) We talked for a good thirty minutes after that, and I believe her. I'm still in shock though.

KNITTING!

Here's the progress on my Aleita Shell. I'm really loving the Silky Wool, and I hope this thing is going to rock when I'm done. I've made some adjustments since my gauge is so different from the pattern. I've done the pattern decreases, but I've added two more sets at 5 inches into the shell for the waist. I'll do the increases for the bust at 8-8.5 inches and then start the bust detail.

See all that work? I have JUST added the second ball of yarn in this picture. Silky Wool goes a long way. The texture is so nice too. I think it will be light enough to wear through May or June with a cute little cami underneath.

A bit of a close up. Some of my stitches are kind of wonky, but it's a combination of me, my tension, and the yarn. It all blocks out though. Ask my swatch.

Have a great Tuesday everyone!

Goodies! We like goodies! Oscars too!

Thanks so much for the hair comments. I really love it more every day! I'm a geek, and I'm ok.

I'm watching the Oscars (holy god could Nikki Kidman BE wearing any more diamonds? also I might be doing a bit of random Oscar commenting. this might get long.) and blogging and trying to type through kitty love. See here:

Tristan is sleeping and making 'nom nom nom' noises on his absolute FAVORITE blanket, which is not to be washed ever lest he become extremely put out and have to sully it up again with his belly fur. Below is Molly (aka Somie, aka Bitchy Cat) who has decided I have better things to do than type. She's quite demanding and very selfish with her lap time. You take it graciously when she decides you're worthy.


I hope your weekend has been relaxing and/or productive. My weekend was great for getting goodies!

I got the cute little Piddly bag on the right (with the pink ribbon) from Jenn and Wendy at Piddleloop. Photo courtesy of their etsy store. They update every few weeks and it is a vicious feeding frenzy. I'm lucky I got a bag at all! This one is now holding my Clapotis which is slowly growing longer.

(Holy shit Marion Cotillard is gorgeous. Hate her. Also, damn her for being so cute with her acceptance speech.)


This little set of stitch markers and earrings came from Kate's etsy shop, Knitty K8. She was having a sweet little sale so I got lots of yummies. The turquoise markers are now on my Clapotis and they are PERFECT. Very lightweight and gorgeous to boot. The earrings went immediately in my ears. They are so stunning Nate even commented on them, and that's saying something!

Last but most certainly not least, Cher sent me the perfect pendant. A Buddha on a lotus flower!! Sweet! I had to run out and buy a chain to put it on, but it's not quite right so I'm still looking. I'm thinking maybe a hemp necklace would work better. It's just so perfect for me. Thanks again, Cher!

I've also done a LOT of knitting this weekend, but I need to take some pictures, so I'll update those later. I made some progress on the Clapotis and a ton of progress on the Aleita Shell. My yarn and gauge are different from the pattern, but I did some evil math and holy shit, it's working. The thing fits. It's lovely.

(The little couple who won for Best Song are SO FREAKING CUTE. I can hardly stand it. They brought the girl, Marketa?, back out for her very own acceptance speech. Adorable. Also, I still hate Cameron Diaz. Hideous prom dress.)

OH! I had a great conversation with my voice coach tonight. He said he wished that I went to his church so I could be in his choir. I replied, "uh...you don't really want me in a church choir, I'm a big ole atheist." He sorta chuckled and then said, "yeah you need that 'I got god' street cred up in here." HA!! I laughed so hard! We had a nice little conversation about religion and moved on. I seriously love this man more every week. Especially since he didn't try to kick me and run.

Next week I'll take a picture of the mural on the wall in the church. It's the most bizarre thing I've ever seen. It makes absolutely no sense. On one side there's the men. They have a lion, lamb, and a dove. In the center is a cross, an angel, a gryphon, and a winged bull (oh yes). Then on the other side is the women, some fruit and roses, and then...a unicorn. And a dragon. Do what? There are unicorns and dragons in the bible? I must have missed the sci fi chapters. Blast.


(Oy the tribute to those who have passed always gets me. Love you Ingmar Bergman, Deborah Kerr, Heath Ledger.)

(Holy crap Diablo Cody won Original Screenplay for Juno! Love her Fred Flintstone dress and skull earrings. Bet they're real diamonds.)

(Oh, Helen Mirren. She's so divine and yet severe looking. Makes me think of a feminine Snape, but in a good way. Daniel Day Lewis is not half bad looking when he's not playing an insane person.)

(I know nothing about any of the movies nominated this year, but yay Joel and Ethan Coen. They tend toward awesomeness. Woo Denzel. He's still got it. Well shit, I guess I have to netflix No Country for Old Men now.)

Thus ends my lame ass Oscar yakking.

Have a great week!

Tabled!!

HR 536 is TABLED! Woot! This is very good news. Now I can relax a little. And have a few drinks. And do a little 'we win motherfuckers!!' dance.

Ok, moving on.

Be very glad I didn't bombard your eyes with my foulness yesterday. I started a post titled "Shitty Shit Shit" and it all went downhill from there. I had woken up in a terrible mood, felt like my head was full of snot and then had to deal with stupid computer and printer issues ALL DAY LONG. You know how things are when you're in a bad mood. Everything seems to turn to oozy muck colored crap before your very eyes. Luckily things have worked out: the two programs I almost redrum'd with my bare-handed mouse are now speaking to each other and I'm getting a new printer/copier/scanner. Yay technology.

Then there was lovely, fun knit night and an eclipse. And it was good.

So, on to a better day! Which is apparently not going too well either. I brought my camera and laptop today so I could take a few pics and post some awesomeness. Then my camera battery died, thus thwarting me mightily. Alas, pictures will come later.

Fast forward to later.

I've been slowly but surely working on the Lenores (sans lace sections on the foot). I'm knitting these as part of a KAL of sorts and as part of a knitter's project. The deadline loometh and I need to get moving on these.


But I cast on for something new. Yes, another something new. With Silky Wool and I even swatched, washed, blocked and measured. It did not kill me. Then I did math. It also did not kill me (though it was a bit touch and go). I cast on for a size that will make the gauge fit me perfectly. Or there will be hell to pay, friends.


I tried to take better pictures of my hair, but this cut is so fierce it refuses to be properly photographed. This is the best I could get. And that's me about to scream expletives in my work bathroom.



Fierce, yet camera shy.

Short Weekend

Weekends are always too short around here. I try to do too many things and then suddenly it's Sunday night and time to start all over. Bah.

One good thing accomplished this weekend was watching The Kingdom. Go rent it or Netflix it now. I learned more in the first two minutes of that movie than I have in watching the news about the war in the last 8 years. Explains a LOT.


I'm still working on all my knitting projects (two pairs of toe up socks and a Clapotis), but this is suddenly captivating me:



That's an Entrelac scarf in Noro Silk Garden. She is pretty and soft and I can't stop working on her. I'm half way through the second ball as of this morning, so what you see here is about a third of what I actually have done. Once I had the directions down, it was surprisingly easy. It's very exciting to watch the scarf grow and change colors. Then again, I'm easily amused.

Hope y'all are having a great weekend! I'll be pretending tomorrow is Tuesday.

Hey, I Think I Love You.

From me (and my friends at xkcd) to you!


Now, go get your nerd on. Or whatever it is you do on days like this...

/nerd

Can't trust that day...

Hello, Monday. Bite me.

Ahem, anyway.

According to bloglines I maybe lost a few subscribers due to the 'revealingness' of my last post. Guess ignorance really can be bliss, eh? S'ok, more atheistic free love orgies for me!* Now if someone could find me Nick Hexum and his little private island...(oh! according to wiki, his island is for sale!! anybody got $7 mil?)

Random aside: I've just realized that maybe I should have added an 8th thing to the last post: People who talk on their cell phones in a public bathroom make me militant. I really like my privacy and sometimes I'll seek out an isolated bathroom just to get it. Please do not take your friends/boyfriends/parents into the bathroom with you. Not only do I not like for *you* to hear me pee, I really dislike folks on the other end hearing me pee too. Yick.



Gosh I get sidetracked easily. I'm really here to demonstrate that the knitting is back on!

Last week I casted on two at a time toe-up Lenores in the STR Lenore colorway given to me as a gift (yum! and thanks super secret gifter *wink*):



Two at a time toe-up basic socks (there's no pattern just yet, so they might be plain old socks) in the STR Little Bunny Foo Foo colorway (double yum!):



And a mini Clapotis (in my own sparkly Aura yarn, dyed a super dark teal semisolid for myself):


If you look closely at the bottom right, you can see I've started dropping stitches. Also, OMG this is going to take FOREVER.

In addition to all this loveliness I am taking a class at my LYS and I'm starting on a secret project that I'll share with you when I'm done. It's a technique I've never tried before and um...one has to pay attention to the damn pattern or one has to frog multiple times. Which is no fun.

Care to venture a guess? :D

*I don't intend to offend, but if someone fails to see the humor then maybe I'm a crappy writer (always possible) or they need to unbunch the panties and just chill. I hear they make drugs for that.

Tagarific

Thanks for all the commiseration on the whole fraud and money theft thing. It's not fun, but I think we got it all worked out now. The bank refunded Nate his money and is getting him a new card, and I have my car loan folks on the watch for the scammers. Idiots.


I got tagged by both Cami and Dfly for this meme. Do y'all really wanna know weird shit about me? Fine then. It's a shame I'm so freaking normal.


7 Semi-Interesting Things:


1. I hate for my food to touch on my plate, unless it's supposed to (think casseroles). Hate. Grosses me out. Each item is supposed to have its own distinct taste and if they touch, it ruins that. Blech.

2. I grew up Southern Baptist, then Episcopal. I'm pretty much an atheist now. Mostly because I need reason and factual evidence, not faith. I also think that organized religion will be the downfall of us all. (this isn't meant to turn into a debate or a flame issue, i dont expect everyone to agree with me and that's cool)

3. When I was 12 I smoked, drank, got high with friends at concerts, and ran away from home. I also used to cut myself, but I was a bit of a wimp about blood, so I didn't cut very deep and I don't have any scars. Making my parents proud was *such* a priority.

4. I almost failed 7th and 8th grades. See #3 for why. In the 9th grade we moved to another state and I immediately became a different person. Graduated high school with a 4.something in top 5% of my class. I was lucky to have some really great teachers who believed in me.

5. I secretly wanted to be a cheerleader from age 11 to 14 or so. I tried out every year but never made the team. Turns out I'm very uncoordinated under pressure.

6. I love to watch people and see what they do with their energy. (I learned this in acting classes.) I love to try to figure out what's going on in folks' heads just by watching them walk around and interact with others. Sometimes I can see when people are having an especially rough day by what they do or don't do with their physical energy. I wish I could see auras though, that would be pretty cool.

7. I'm so socially and politcally liberal, I should probably live on another planet and head a commune of psycho naked hippies. With Bono. Yeah. That would rock. We could build our houses out of hemp, grow organic gardens with the results of our compost heap, make our own clothes, have group therapy to explore our self awarness around a camp fire, and then the group sex.

What? Did I go too far?


I'm not much of a re-tagger, so if you'd like to play along tag yourself dude.

Drama

Aside from the haircut, this has not been a spectacular week.

I have cast on 3 projects though, and that's all that is cheering me up today. More on those later.

Yesterday Nate discovered that someone had swiped his card and stolen his account information along with $700. I really want to know what was SO awesome at Walmart that was worth $700. Seriously. If you're going to steal from someone, go buy something fabulous.

Today I'm getting phone calls from my car loan company saying I haven't paid in 3 months. The 'representative' tells me an amount, which is quite random and not at all equal to 3 months payments, and that I owe December, January, and February. So I go online and pull all the receipts and confirmation numbers that show I've paid and I show NO outstanding balance. Still, she demands this random amount of money from me, by check over the phone. To which I reply, "um...no, fuck off," and hang up.

I'm calling the company to tell them about all this and give them the phone number the lady called from (residential in Tempe, AZ) so they can do whatever it is they do with shit like this.

My bigger concern is that this person has access to my car loan information. While she might not have everything, she has my cell phone number and that really bothers me.

Grrr. I hate people sometimes.

Yay for Voting! And New Hair!

I voted early, which was very cool because there were very few people at the election office so it was super fast. If you voted today, good on you!

Nate and I have an interesting friend. Well, he's beyond interesting, but what I would say about him would be un-PC so I'll just leave it at "interesting." Today he went and voted for Hillary. He's from the other side of the fence. Why then, did he vote for her? Not because he likes her. Not because of her politics.

Because he wants to "see a good game."

My response? "..........."

Sigh.



Moving on to less frustrating subjects, let's discuss my hair.

Before 2 p.m. today it was black and shoulder length with long layers. I dug it, but I'm lazy so I would usually wear it up instead of fixing it all proper like.

After 2 p.m. it's magenta (oh, yes) and about an inch long in the back. Here's the rest:


Left side:

Right Side:

Whee! It's a *little* shorter than I wanted it, but in a week or two it will be perfection. I've played and styled it three times already. It looks best straightened and with some pomade type stuff.

When I first showed the picture of what I wanted to my hair dresser, she took one look a Posh and said "oh no, we are NOT going blonde," but once I made it clear that I only wanted the cut she squee'd out loud. She couldn't get on board with the black color and purple highlights, so we compromised with a dark brown/dark cherry mix. It is awesome.

:D

Goodbye Cruel World...

I was having a great weekend full of crossing things off my lists like laundry, dishes, changing the sheets, getting my toes did, choosing a new haircut for Tuesday's visit to my rockin' hair salon (oh yes, I'm totally doing it), updating the Etsy store, packaging yarn, and accomplishing various other chores. I deserved a gold star even.

And then I picked up my knitting.

I started an innocent hat for a friend thinking, "oh I'll bust out this hat in a weekend, no problem!" I got to the decreases and put it on Nate's head for size comparison. It's too big. Riiiiiiiiiip. That's fine, I didn't really like that pattern anyway.

Then I moved on to my Hourglass Sweater. Nate says, "hmm, you know that looks like it might be too big for you." So I do a little measuring and what do you know? TOO FUCKING BIG.

Off to the deep end of the frog pond with the Pastaza. Do a cannonball in, would you?

I had gauge. I cast on the right number of stitches. Everything was going so well. But you could throw 40 lbs on me and that sweater still wouldn't fit.

Since I'm in the process of ripping things, I went ahead and ripped Nate's Cobblestone (too big...are you shocked?) and the UNeck Vest that's been languishing on the needles. That project actually fit (a bit too long though), but I got irritated by the top. I couldn't bring myself to take pics of the ripping of everything. It's too much to bear.

Clearly knitting and I need a break. Maybe I should stick to scarves. Those are hard to fuck up.

Or I'll cheat on knitting (ha! take that knitting!) with my voice practice, cause apparently that's something I'm good at. I added a lower octave tonight, bringing my total to 3. Sweet. The voice coach says my progress is "freaky fast," and I'll be having that compliment for desert every night this week.

But first, I need a lie down and some chocolate. And someone to hold me.